How Cogeco Peer 1 Gets Their Sales Team Active On Social Media

Cogeco Peer 1 is a global provider of essential business-to-business products and services, such as colocation, network connectivity, hosting, cloud and managed services that allow customers across Canada, Mexico, the United States and Western Europe to focus on their core business. With 16 data centers, extensive FastFiber Network® and more than 50 points of presence in North America and Europe combined, Cogeco Peer 1 is a trusted partner to businesses small, medium and large, providing the ability to access, move, manage and store mission-critical data worldwide, backed by superior customer support.

Claudine Dumont is the Director of Global Marketing Operations at Cogeco Peer 1, a company that provides a range of B2B products and services from network connectivity to managed IT services.

Claudine and her team noticed a shift in how their buyers interacted online. They were becoming more sophisticated and were seeking out specific solutions to their business challenges.

She realized she needed to equip the sales team with the necessary technology to engage today’s buyer. With employee advocacy, it was about positioning the sales reps as industry thought leaders who had the right knowledge, resources, and credibility to participate in social conversations.

Empowered by Marketing, Made for Sales

There was no silver bullet to solve the brand’s challenges overnight but Claudine knew they needed to be on all marketing channels. Most importantly, they needed to empower their employees to be brand ambassadors.

When thinking about a solution, she channeled the CEO’s stance on employee engagement. Cogeco Peer 1’s CEO Philippe Jette consistently said that he considered all his employees to be sales professionals. Everyone had a role to play in amplifying the brand in their day-to-day so it was important that every employee had the means to promote Cogeco Peer 1.

With PostBeyond, they could now enable their sales professionals to get involved in conversations earlier by easily sharing approved content to their social networks. Armed with employee advocacy, they took a step towards modernizing their sales approach and increasing their thought leadership.

Measuring ROI

Claudine focused on measuring the ROI of all marketing initiatives across the department. With PostBeyond, they tracked Earned Media Value to provide a valuable outcome for their employee advocacy program. Beyond just their marketing metrics, she also saw great value for the sales reps.

“It’s a great barometer for us to see the sales reps who are actually using the platform and posting approved content. It allows for our Sales execs to see which individuals are sharing the content and guide the others in the necessary direction.”

– Claudine Dumont, Director of Global Marketing Operations

Why PostBeyond

1. Shift Towards Social Selling
Their sales reps are now getting active on social media – which increased their collective brand reach. Their sales are able to share industry-relevant content which directly builds their thought leadership.

2. Turn Sales Reps Into Brand Ambassadors
By having a library of pre-approved content, their sales reps became brand ambassadors much more easily. They are able to share approved content without having to spend the time to curate content themselves.

3. Ease-of-Use and Salesforce Integration
PostBeyond provides their sales reps an easy-to-use platform accessible through Salesforce. The integration made it convenient for the sales reps to access content – eliminating the time it took to sign into different tools.

“This is one of the products that has proven to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. It’s something sales recognizes marketing has brought to them which has added tremendous value.”

– Claudine Dumont, Director of Global Marketing Operations

Results

Within one year, Cogeco Peer 1 was able to:

Drive 81% in employee adoption.

Increase their social media reach well over 14,500,000 viewers.

Empower their sales team to share content over 3,500 times.

Generate over 23,000 content interactions.

What’s Next?

Using PostBeyond, the marketing team now has visibility into what their top performing content is. This has provided confirmation on trending topics and inform them about what content people care about in their industry.

As Claudine continues to build their marketing technology stack, she sees PostBeyond as an integral part of their process. With all of Cogeco Peer 1’s marketing campaigns, employee advocacy is now an important piece of her technology stack and PostBeyond as a platform that simplifies their social media efforts without extra effort.